“They’re inside the camp!” someone yells. “The guerrilleros are here and they’re inside!”
Desfosseux thinks he recognizes the voice as that of Sergeant Labiche, and feels his skin tremble. The artillery base is a pandemonium of stampeding men, screams and the blaze of gunfire; of shadows, lights, shapes and figures moving, crowding together or facing off against each other. It is impossible to distinguish between friend and foe. Attempting to retain his composure, the captain retreats, keeping his back against the hut wall. He checks that there is no enemy near, then looks over at the fortified position housing Fanfan and his brothers: in the trench protected by thick planks and fascines that leads to the gun emplacement, he can see flashes of gunfire and the glint of swords and bayonets. Men are fighting in hand-to-hand combat. Only now does he finally realize what is happening. This has nothing to do with guerrilleros: this is an all-out assault from the beach. The Spanish have landed, intent on destroying the field guns.
“Over here!” he screams. “Follow me! We have to save the guns!”
This is all because of Soult, he thinks suddenly. Of course. Marshal Soult, commander-in-chief of the French army in Andalucía, personally relieved Marshal Victor as head of the Premier Corps and is currently doing a tour of inspection: Jerez, El Puerto de Santa María, Puerto Real and Chiclana. Tonight he is billeted less than a mile from here, and tomorrow he is scheduled to visit the Trocadero. So the enemy decided to get up early and arrange a warm welcome for him. Knowing the Spaniards—and he believes he knows them by now—that is likely to be the reason for this raid. Something similar happened last year during the visit of King Joseph. Damn them all, damn the manolos and the marshal. In Simon Desfosseux’s opinion, none of this has anything to do with him or his men.
“To the gun battery! Defend the gun battery!”
In answer to this rallying cry, one of the shadows nearby fires a bullet that misses him by inches, raising a shower of splinters from the hut behind. Desfosseux carefully steps out of the light. He hesitates, reluctant to use his sword, for he knows the Spanish are fearsome in hand-to-hand combat; he has had enough of the clash and clang of heavy blades in his worst nightmares. Nor does he want to discharge his only pistol, since the outcome is uncertain. The decision is taken out of his hands by a group of soldiers who set upon the enemy with rifles and bayonets, clearing a path. Good lads, the captain thinks, relieved as he rushes to join them. They may be feckless and complaining when things are slack, but when the time comes they are raring to fight.
“Come on! We have to protect the field guns!”
Simon Desfosseux is the antithesis of an imperial hero. His idea of a warrior’s glory is relative—he does not even think of himself as a warrior, but there is a time and a place for everything. And he is beside himself at the thought of the manolos laying hands on his precious Villantroys-Ruty howitzers, recently joined by new field guns—christened Lulu and Henriette by the troops—cast in Seville, for which he has high hopes. And so, leading a party of half a dozen men, his sword drawn, the captain dashes toward the embattled position, a chaos of guns, screams and steel. Soldiers are fighting in utter confusion, illuminated by a sudden burst of flame that shoots above the barrack roofs. Desfosseux spots Lieutenant Bertoldi, in shirtsleeves, lashing out with the butt of a rifle.
Close by—too close, thinks the petrified captain—he hears voices in Spanish. Vámonos, they seem to be saying. Vámonos. A small group of shadows who have been crouching in the darkness suddenly emerge and rush toward Simon Desfosseux. He does not know whether the enemy are attacking or retreating, he knows only that they are headed straight for him; when they are four or five paces away, there is a brief flash of gunfire and several bullets whistle past him. He can also see the glint of naked steel glimmering red in the glow from the distant blaze. His panic mounting as he sees them marching toward him, Desfosseux raises his pistol—a bulky An IX cavalry pistol—and fires blindly into the crowd, then flails about with his sword, hoping to keep the enemy at bay. The blade narrowly misses one of the men, who dashes past the captain, head down, stabbing at him with a short knife that barely brushes Desfosseux’s nightshirt, then disappears into the darkness.
IT IS NOT easy to retreat with a knife in one hand and a spent rifle in the other. The long, French Charleville musket slows Felipe Mojarra as he runs from the gun battery, but his honor as a salter forbids him from leaving it behind. No man worthy of the name would come back without his gun, and Mojarra has never abandoned his, even in the most dire circumstances. These days, rifles are in short supply. But the assault on La Cabezuela has been a disaster. Some of the comrades running with him through the darkness, desperate to reach the beach and the boats that should be waiting for them—pray God they have not left!—are muttering about betrayal, as they always do when things go wrong; the incompetence of their leaders, the lack of organization, the utter contempt with which ordinary soldiers are treated … it was doomed from the start. The assault, scheduled for 4 a.m., was supposed to be made by a team of fourteen British sappers, led by a lieutenant, and a detachment of twenty-five men from the Salt Marsh Fusiliers, supported by four gunboats from the docks at Punta Cantera, with half a light infantry company from the Guardias Españoles on the beach to support the offensive and the re-embarkation of the troops. But at the appointed hour, the infantry still had not shown up and the boats waiting on the dark bay off the Cabezuela, their oars wrapped in rags to muffle the splash, were at risk of being spotted. Faced with the dilemma of either waiting or retreating, the English lieutenant decided to press on immediately. Goh a-hed, Mojarra heard him say, or something of the sort. Someone muttered that he was clearly determined to have his slice of glory. At first the landing—in pitch darkness since there was no moon—went well. The Salt Marsh Fusiliers moved silently across the beach and the first French guards had their throats cut before they realized; but then, without anyone knowing why, things began to go wrong—an isolated gunshot, then another, degenerating into a free-for-all of burning buildings and indiscriminate gunfire—and soon the English and Spanish troops were not fighting for control of the gun battery, they were fighting to save their own skins.
This is what Felipe Mojarra is doing right now: running for his life, running toward the beach, panicked at the thought of tripping in the darkness and smashing his skull. With one hand he holds his knife; the other is still clutching his rifle. And all the while, with the fatalism so characteristic of his race, he is thinking: sometimes you win, most times you lose. But tonight he is desperate not to lose—not to lose everything. Mojarra knows that if he is captured, his life will not be worth a brass farthing. To be caught by the gabachos while armed and wearing civilian clothes is an automatic death sentence for a Spaniard. The Frenchies are particularly brutal to prisoners with no uniform, whom they refer to as guerrilleros—even if they have been fighting with regular soldiers, and have the red cockade sewn on to their caps or their clothing next to the pictures of saints, the medals and the scapulars. This was how Felipe Mojarra lost both his cousins three years ago, after the battle of Medellín, when Marshal Victor—the same man who until recently led the siege against Cádiz—ordered four hundred Spanish soldiers, most of them wounded, to be shot simply because they were wearing peasant clothes.
Mojarra feels sand beneath his feet, though he is wearing sandals—in the darkness, you never know when you might step on something that could hurt you. The ground is soft and pale. The beach and the shoreline are no more than five hundred feet away; the tide is high. Out in the bay, the Spanish gunboats are firing at intervals on Fort Luis and the eastern part of the beach, protecting the flank of the retreating troops. Mojarra knows the risks of spending too much time in the open, which would expose him to a bullet from friend or enemy; he veers slightly left toward the shelter of the ruined Matagorda fort. His eardrums are throbbing from the effort of running, and he cannot seem to catch his breath. All around him on the beach, shadows are running pell-mell: a c
onfusion of Englishmen and Spaniards, all desperate, like him, to make it to the water’s edge. Beyond the fort, he can see the flashes of the French guns like a string of firecrackers. A few stray bullets whistle past; meanwhile, a shot from a Spanish gunboat falls short of its target, exploding with a deafening blast in a narrow tidal creek, and the fleeting blaze lights up the crumbling black walls. Mojarra runs on, and is about to overtake someone ahead of him, but before he can catch up there comes another gunshot and the figure crumples to the ground. Mojarra rushes past without stopping, without even looking, other than to make sure he does not trip over the body. He reaches the shelter of the Matagorda wall, where he pauses to catch his breath, glancing anxiously across the beach as he snaps the blade of his knife back into the horn handle and tucks it into his belt. There is a launch not far off: he can just make out the long shadow near the shoreline. A moment later, it is clearly visible in a flash of cannonfire from the gunboats; the launch bobs on the black water, oars raised, with men already aboard or splashing through the shallows to reach it. Without thinking, Mojarra slings his rifle over his shoulder and dashes for the boat. The soft sand makes the going difficult, but he manages to run fast enough. He plunges into the water up to his waist, grabs the side of the boat and clambers aboard as hands grab his shirt, his arms, and hoist him in.
There are still shouts of “Treason!” as more dark shapes come running, framed against the distant fire, and scrabble to get aboard. As he falls between the benches, Mojarra lands on someone, who lets out a howl of pain and something unintelligible in English. He tries to move away and, struggling to get up, instinctively puts out his hand and leans his weight on the man’s bare torso. The howls of the Englishman are louder still. As he pulls his hand away, Mojarra discovers a large piece of the man’s charred skin stuck to his palm.
IT IS RAINING as though water were flowing from an open tap, gushing down from the low, black clouds. The violent thunderstorm that punished Cádiz this morning has given way to a steady torrential downpour. Everything is saturated; the rain drums on the roofs and the houses, pooling in puddles, forming rivulets in the sand sprinkled over the cobbles to prevent horses’ hooves slipping. Sodden flags and garlands of flowers, battered by the rain, hang from the balconies. Sheltering in the doorway of the church of San Antonio, amid a throng of people wearing oilskins or carrying umbrellas—hundreds more of them crowd beneath the awnings and balconies—Rogelio Tizón watches the ceremony that, despite the weather, is taking place beneath the marquee erected in the center of the square. Spain, or that part of it symbolized by Cádiz, now has a Constitution. The solemn proclamation was made this morning, and the foul weather has done little to mar the festivities. Given the risk of French bombs—which in recent weeks have become more frequent and more accurate—a pageant of deputies and other dignitaries followed by a Te Deum in the cathedral was considered ill-advised. It was feared that the enemy might try to commemorate the event after their own fashion. And so the proceedings were moved to the Iglesia del Carmen, opposite the Alameda, beyond the range of enemy artillery. Excited crowds—the whole of Cádiz has turned out, irrespective of class or profession—have staunchly braved squalls and showers, and even a large tree that suddenly came crashing to the ground without any damage: in fact this incident seemed to add to the elation as bells rang out in every church, the cannons on the square and in the warships at anchor thundered, to be answered by every French gun battery on the far shore of the bay. Celebrating, in their own way, since today, March 19, 1812, is also Joseph Bonaparte’s saint’s day.
Now, well into the afternoon, the formalities are continuing and Rogelio Tizón is surprised by the resilience of the crowd. Having spent the morning being lashed by the storm, the townsfolk are braving heavy showers to listen eagerly to a reading of the Constitution, something which has been performed twice already: once before the Customs House, where the Regency erected a portrait of Fernando VII, and again at the Plaza del Mentidero. When the third ceremony here in San Antonio concludes, the official procession, followed by the public, will move through the crowded streets to its final scheduled stop: the port of San Felipe Neri, where they are awaited by the deputies who this morning received a freshly printed copy of the Constitution—already nicknamed La Pepa, in honor of the feast of St. Joseph. And it is curious, thinks Tizón, gazing around him, to see how—for a few hours at least—the proceedings have been greeted with unanimous acclaim and general enthusiasm. Even those most critical of the constitutional enterprise seem to have succumbed to the collective outpouring of joy and hope, and joined in the pomp and ceremony. The policeman has been surprised to see the most reactionary monarchists, those virulently opposed to any whiff of national sovereignty, taking part in the events, applauding with the crowds—or at least putting on a brave face and biting their tongue. Even the two rebel deputies, a man named Llamas and the delegate from Vizcaya, Eguía, who had refused to ratify the text approved by the Cortes—the former declaring himself opposed to national sovereignty, the latter hiding behind the privileges of his province—duly signed and pledged with the others this morning, when they were faced with the choice of doing so or finding themselves stripped of their Spanish nationality and forced to leave the country within twenty-four hours. When it comes down to it, the comisario thinks cynically, such miracles are brought about as much by prudence and fear as by patriotic fervor.
The reading has concluded now and the solemn pageant moves off. The troops lining the route present arms, their uniforms sodden from the rain; escorted by a cavalry unit, the cortège heads toward the Calle de la Torre, to the rhythm of a marching band that is utterly drowned out by the torrential rain, but applauded nonetheless by those lining the streets. As the procession passes the church, Rogelio Tizón sees the newly appointed Governor of Cádiz and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Don Cayetano Valdés: somber, wiry, ramrod-straight with sideburns that come down to the collar of his frockcoat. Wearing the uniform of a lieutenant general, the man who captained the Pelayo at the battle of San Vicente and the Neptuno at Trafalgar walks slowly and impassively through the deluge, holding a red morocco-bound copy of the Constitution, which he shields as best he can. Since Villavicencio was appointed to the Regency and Valdés took over the position of military and political governor of Cádiz, Tizón has met with him only once, accompanied by Intendant García Pico; the results were unsatisfactory. Unlike his predecessor, Valdés is a man of liberal ideas. He also turns out to be a blunt, tactless individual with the gruff manners of a sailor who has spent most of his life under arms. With him there can be no subterfuge, no implicit understandings. From the moment they first explained the case of the murdered girls, he made himself absolutely clear to the comisario and the Intendant: if results were not forthcoming, he would seek out those responsible. As to the means used in conducting this or any other investigation, he assured Tizón—about whose background he seemed to be extremely well informed—that he would not tolerate prisoners being tortured, arbitrary arrests, nor any abuses that would contravene the new rights laid down by the Cortes. “Spain has changed,” he said, before dismissing them from his office. “There is no way back, either for you or for me. Perhaps it is best that we all know where we stand.”
Watching the procession with a critical eye, the comisario remembers the words of this man, now walking solemnly through the pouring rain. He cannot help but wonder what will happen if the king now held prisoner in France should return. Beloved by his subjects—who know nothing of his character and intentions (private reports Tizón has read of his conduct during the Escorial conspiracy, the mutiny of Aranjuez*2 and the imprisonment in Bayonne*3 do not show him in a flattering light)—when young Fernando VII returns to Spain he will discover that in his absence, and in his name, a group of visionaries inspired by the ideas of the French Revolution have turned the traditional order upside down on the pretext that, deprived of their monarch—or abandoned by him—and delivered into the hands of the enemy, the Spanish pe
ople have had to fight for themselves and enact their own laws. And so, even as he watches the new Constitution being proclaimed, Rogelio Tizón, who knows little about politics, but has considerable experience plumbing the depths of the human heart, cannot help but wonder whether the mob now cheering and applauding in the rain—the same brutal, illiterate mob that dragged General Solano through the streets, and would as likely do the same to General Valdés—would not cheer and applaud just as enthusiastically if the situation were reversed. He also wonders whether, when he returns, Fernando VII will meekly accept this new state of affairs or whether he will side with those who insist the Spanish people are not fighting for some chimerical national sovereignty, they are fighting for God and King. So Spain might return to how it was; and these claims of sovereignty might become nothing more than usurpation and presumption. A nonsense that time will reverse.
Rain is still hammering down on the Plaza de San Antonio. In a thunder of hooves and festive music, the procession slowly moves along beneath the sodden flags and the bunting hanging from the balconies. Leaning back against the door of the church, the comisario takes a cigar from his case and lights it. Then he calmly surveys the joyful throng around him, people of every class and creed enthusiastically applauding. He carefully studies every face, as though committing each one to memory. It is a professional reflex, a precaution. At the end of the day, whether liberal and royalist, the struggle in Cádiz is simply a new variant on the never-ending struggle for power. Rogelio Tizón has not forgotten that until recently—on the orders of his superiors, in the name of King Carlos IV—he was throwing people in jail for distributing books or pamphlets promulgating the very ideas now being carried through the streets by the governor, handsomely bound in red leather. And he knows that with or without the French, whether absolute monarch, national sovereignty or Pepa the flamenco singer sitting enthroned at San Felipe Neri, whoever governs Spain, as anywhere, will always have need of prisons and policemen.
The Siege Page 56
